If your name appears in all the Social Directories; if you are a member of six or eight fashionable clubs; if you never plan a dinner without unpotting a pound or so of pâté de foie gras; if you never witness an opera except from an opera box; if you never go to the city except in an imported motor-car, why then just knock at the title page, open the door, walk in, take off your monocle—or your turreted tiara—and make yourself perfectly at home.
AN INVITATION TO THE
READER
Elucidating the Little May-Pole
Festival on the following [page]
Reader, will you join a gay dance
Of the younger Social Set,
And, amid their merry May-dance,
Personally pirouette?
Don a garment, smart and snappy,
Wear your most engaging smile,
Banish boredom and be happy—
In the world of chic and style.
Cedric woos Celeste—who dances—
Vowing love that never dies;
Ethel sees adoring glances
In athletic Albert’s eyes;
Peter—solvent as Mæcenas,
Lures a mermaid to the shore,
Telling her she looks like Venus,
Which, of course, she’s heard before.
You may dance, while Signor Cupid
Fiddles an entrancing tune;
Or, if you find jazzing stupid,
There are gardens—and a moon!
Life, and all its animation
Bids us join the mad mêlée,
And, to use an old quotation,
Gather rose-buds while we may.
Every make of merry mortal,
Wise or otherwise, is here,
And this page is but the portal
Of another world made clear.
Yes, a world, and you may buy it
In this giddy, gaudy book,
Though, of course, I can’t deny it
Has a rather Fish-y look!